Modern data multiplexing or streaming systems tremendously simplify the processing and/or delivery of multiple information streams to home entertainment systems. Such data multiplexing/streaming requires sophisticated systems to handle the variety of scenarios such multiplexing systems need to support.
The required aggregation of multiple data-streams/channels presents significant requirements on the signal processing elements of the multiplexing and streaming device. Prior solutions are inefficient in terms of the required device cost, size, power consumption, flexibility, the multiplexed streams' fidelity, and the quality of the processed streams in challenging scenarios.
A special situation arises if the stream to be delivered to different destinations such as, for example, different entertainment centers, is the same. Such a situation might manifest itself by a stream being replicated across multiple channels, such as a stream being replicated multiple times in the frequency domain. Such a replication of a sub-stream across multiple sub-channels results in worst excursion signal levels of the combined stream and can result in saturation, clipping, and distort the signal delivered to the home entertainment system. Such peak amplitude excursion issues are sometime known as peak-to-average power (PAR) problems. Such large signal excursions can occur because the same sub-stream is replicated, which results in a very structured, non-random, signal amplitude variations. Such structured processed signal could result in very large signal excursions in some transform domain, and so the processing elements, digital or analog, would need to support a very large dynamic range for the processed stream or significant clipping distortion and saturation would plague the processed stream.
It is desirable to have an apparatus, method, and system for mitigating large peaks associated with the distribution of streams that are replicated multiple times across multiple sub-channels